School of Science and Technology, University of Camerino, Camerino, 62032, Italy.
Sci Rep. 2019 Jan 24;9(1):559. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-36965-1.
The successful use of process calculi to specify behavioural models allows us to compare RNA and protein folding processes from a new perspective. We model the folding processes as behaviours resulting from the interactions that nucleotides and amino acids (the elementary units that compose RNAs and proteins respectively) perform on their linear sequences. This approach is intended to provide new knowledge about the studied systems without strictly relying on empirical data. By applying Milner's CCS process algebra to highlight the distinguishing features of the two folding processes, we discovered an abstraction level at which they show behavioural equivalences. We believe that this result could be interpreted as a clue in favour of the highly-debated RNA World theory, according to which, in the early stages of cell evolution, RNA molecules played most of the functional and structural roles carried out today by proteins.
成功地使用过程演算来指定行为模型，使我们能够从新的角度比较 RNA 和蛋白质折叠过程。我们将折叠过程建模为核苷酸和氨基酸（分别构成 RNA 和蛋白质的基本单元）在其线性序列上相互作用产生的行为。这种方法旨在提供关于所研究系统的新知识，而不严格依赖经验数据。通过应用米尔纳的 CCS 进程代数来突出两个折叠过程的区别特征，我们发现了一个抽象层次，它们在这个层次上表现出行为等价性。我们认为，这一结果可以被解释为支持备受争议的 RNA 世界理论的一个线索，根据这一理论，在细胞进化的早期阶段，RNA 分子扮演了今天由蛋白质执行的大部分功能和结构角色。
